In this Book
Restaging the Past: Historical Pageants, Culture and Society in Modern Britain
Book
2020
Published by:
University College London
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
summary
Restaging the Past is the first edited collection devoted to the study of historical pageants in Britain, ranging from their Edwardian origins to the present day.
Across Britain in the twentieth century, people succumbed to ‘pageant fever’. Thousands dressed up in historical costumes and performed scenes from the history of the places where they lived, and hundreds of thousands more watched them. These pageants were one of the most significant aspects of popular engagement with the past between the 1900s and the 1970s: they took place in large cities, small towns and tiny villages, and engaged a whole range of different organised groups, including Women’s Institutes, political parties, schools, churches and youth organisations.
Pageants were community events, bringing large numbers of people together in a shared celebration and performance of the past; they also involved many prominent novelists, professional historians and other writers, as well as featuring repeatedly in popular and highbrow literature. Although the pageant tradition has largely died out, it deserves to be acknowledged as a key aspect of community history during a period of great social and political change. Indeed, as this book shows, some traces of ‘pageant fever’ remain in evidence today.
Table of Contents


pp. 56-79
pp. 80-107
pp. 108-131

-
View 5. Historical Pageants, Citizenship and the Performance of Women’s History before Second-Wave Feminism
-
Download 5. Historical Pageants, Citizenship and the Performance of Women’s History before Second-Wave Feminism
- Save 5. Historical Pageants, Citizenship and the Performance of Women’s History before Second-Wave Feminism
pp. 132-157

-
View 6. Nobility, Duty and Courage: Propaganda and Inspiration in Interwar Women’s and Girls’ Pageants
-
Download 6. Nobility, Duty and Courage: Propaganda and Inspiration in Interwar Women’s and Girls’ Pageants
- Save 6. Nobility, Duty and Courage: Propaganda and Inspiration in Interwar Women’s and Girls’ Pageants
pp. 158-179
pp. 180-200
pp. 201-225

-
View 9. The ‘Quite Ordinary Man’ at the Pageant: History, Community and Local Identity in the 1951 Festival of Britain
-
Download 9. The ‘Quite Ordinary Man’ at the Pageant: History, Community and Local Identity in the 1951 Festival of Britain
- Save 9. The ‘Quite Ordinary Man’ at the Pageant: History, Community and Local Identity in the 1951 Festival of Britain
pp. 252-280

-
View 11. After the Show is Over … Souvenirs and Mementos: The Material Culture of Historical Pageants
-
Download 11. After the Show is Over … Souvenirs and Mementos: The Material Culture of Historical Pageants
- Save 11. After the Show is Over … Souvenirs and Mementos: The Material Culture of Historical Pageants
ISBN | 9781787354050 |
---|---|
Related ISBN(s) | 9781787354067 |
DOI | 10.1353/book.81866![]() |
MARC Record | Download |
OCLC | 1179290621 |
Launched on MUSE | 2021-01-19 |
Language | English |
Open Access | Yes |
Creative Commons | CC-BY |